The main idea of this level is to simulate 5 "stagez" in the style of original Bomberman from NES, with Timebomb Grunt as the Bomberman himself. The difficulty will increase with each completed "stage", with the first one being pretty easy and the fifth being hard or very hard. I've started creating this CL right after The Four Wizardz, but in the middle I've got a thought that this level is bad and ceased designing it. Now I've taken a look at it again and I think that it's actually good enough to continue this idea.

Post by Zu on Nov 30, 2010 14:30:40 GMT -8

All right, CL is ready for beta-testing! I've tested it extensively myself, and as far as I can tell, it can be finished with a PERFECT score. Still, I'm sending it to the Pinkgoo and GooRoo for additional testing. Anyone else?

Post by GooRoo on Nov 30, 2010 17:05:41 GMT -8

All right, CL is ready for beta-testing! I've tested it extensively myself, and as far as I can tell, it can be finished with a PERFECT score. Still, I'm sending it to the Pinkgoo and GooRoo for additional testing. Anyone else?

I have SAVEd your Statz Page image to my hard drive, and will upload it to the web host and link it in later. I just received the puzzle itself, and will begin play-testing it. (I hope to be able to distribute both it and "Octopus's Garden" (by Gaby) shortly after dinner ... it is 5:05PM in my time zone.)

Post by Zu on Dec 3, 2010 5:05:00 GMT -8

GooRoo found a logic-less brick in Stage 5, next to the black switch in the bottom-left corner. Will be fixed in the final version. Hopefully, there are no more mistakez like this...

If it's interesting for someone, here's a list a few interesting triviaz about the designing progress:

* Before creating Stage 5, the Sword Grunt from Stage 2 was able to start pursuing player immediately after destroying the brickz that surround him. After finishing the fifth stage, he no longer does it, if player is far enough from him.

* The pool below the Stage 4 was intended to contain pink Toob Grunt as a decoration, just like in all of my previous levelz. Unfortunately, when he was present, the Gauntletz Gruntz were no longer able to sense the player from the desired range. Removing him fixed the problem. An AI overload, perhapz?

* Initially, the Stage 3 was intended to be more based on a tight timing - for instance, the whole area within the purple pyramidz contained another Shovel Grunt instead, and the green button was replaced with another purple one, requiring the Bombergrunt to get all three Spy Gruntz trapped in the black pyramidz in a one run, and do it quickly enough to avoid getting all the moundz digged up, basically blocking the way to the black switch. It was far too difficult though and actually impossible, as the Beach Ballz had too short "working" time to allow such a timed puzzle. So, the final version requirez only two Spy Gruntz to get trapped at once, and the second Shovel Grunt got replaced with just a sword-wielding guard.

* Static Hazardz from Stage 5 were initially intended to activate each 10 secondz. To make it easier to detect when it will happen, I've added a "timer" above the stage containing 10 toggling bridgez. Unfortunately, it was nearly impossible to correctly time them - it appearz that the 10 secondz is not the same thing for bridgez and these static hazardz, because after some cyclez, the ballz were shooting at a completely improper time. So in the end, I've removed the timer and set the static hazardz to run each 4 secondz...

* When I was trying to make a proper solution for Stage 4, I was encountering some problemz when trying to do the part with Invincibility power-up and three purple buttonz:1) The rightmost Boomerang Grunt was too often loosing my track and starting to attack the Shield Grunt instead, basically ruining the solution. So I've replaced some of the grey pyramidz with black onez that will hide after pressing the black switch, to make it easier for this Boomerang Grunt to follow me.2) Initially, the part with purple buttonz required to make all three purple buttonz being pressed by Boomerang Gruntz; the black pyramidz were purple, forcing the Bombergrunt to quickly pass them once lowered, without the usage of another grunt. The idea required to tell the Bombergrunt to enter the arrow, which would cause the Boomerang Gruntz to move closer to the arrow and in result press all of the buttonz. But since it was too easy for them to kill themselves with their boomerangz, I've redesigned this part a bit, requiring only two Boomerang Gruntz and having a Shield Grunt as the one who'll lower the pyramidz for Bombergrunt.

Shortly saying, I had the most problemz with Stage 4 - it took me an entire day to get it right. It's probably the only stage, where the locationz of the brickz are mostly well-thought-out rather than being completely random.

Post by GooRoo on Dec 3, 2010 7:21:19 GMT -8

Your signature line is inappropriate, Zu! Your English is better than most of the American teenagerz today! Computerz, the Internet and texting have combined to cause most of them to use "to", "too" and "two" interchangeably, along with "there", "their" and "they're" ... and they can not explain the difference between them! (Those two are only a pair of examplez of the loss of knowledge of the English language in this country ... there are many more. )

Some Gruntzerz (and I am probably the worst of us!) make life difficult for non-English language speakerz and automated translatorz, such as BabelFish, by the substitution of "z" for "s" in pluralz. At timez, we over-do it with substituting "z" for "s" in possessivez (Zu'z new puzzle) ... which should not happen ... nor such substitutionz in wordz that are not plural, but end in "s", such az haz.

Post by BattlezM on Dec 3, 2010 8:54:50 GMT -8

GooRoo found a logic-less brick in Stage 5, next to the black switch in the bottom-left corner. Will be fixed in the final version. Hopefully, there are no more mistakez like this...

If it's interesting for someone, here's a list a few interesting triviaz about the designing progress:

* The pool below the Stage 4 was intended to contain pink Toob Grunt as a decoration, just like in all of my previous levelz. Unfortunately, when he was present, the Gauntletz Gruntz were no longer able to sense the player from the desired range. Removing him fixed the problem. An AI overload, perhapz?

I can explain this one is caused by AI sensing rangez. If they detect another enemy in reach (even if unreachable), AIz will often ignore your grunt. If the toob was set to the gauntletz to the same team as the toob grunt, this would be resolved. (although now other gruntz on different teamz may distract the gauntletz)

Post by Zu on Dec 3, 2010 9:18:44 GMT -8

I can explain this one is caused by AI sensing rangez. If they detect another enemy in reach (even if unreachable), AIz will often ignore your grunt. If the toob was set to the gauntletz to the same team as the toob grunt, this would be resolved. (although now other gruntz on different teamz may distract the gauntletz)

The thing is, the Toob Grunt was in the same team as all of the gruntz in that area. 3rd team, if it changes anything... and the closest gruntz from the other teamz were definitely too far from Gauntletz Gruntz (range of two of these Gauntletz Gruntz was set to 10, and the last one's to 6... and gruntz from other teamz were placed in different "stagez").

Your signature line is inappropriate, Zu! Your English is better than most of the American teenagerz today! Computerz, the Internet and texting have combined to cause most of them to use "to", "too" and "two" interchangeably, along with "there", "their" and "they're" ... and they can not explain the difference between them! (Those two are only a pair of examplez of the loss of knowledge of the English language in this country ... there are many more. )

Some Gruntzerz (and I am probably the worst of us!) make life difficult for non-English language speakerz and automated translatorz, such as BabelFish, by the substitution of "z" for "s" in pluralz. At timez, we over-do it with substituting "z" for "s" in possessivez (Zu'z new puzzle) ... which should not happen ... nor such substitutionz in wordz that are not plural, but end in "s", such az haz.

Believe me, I'm still learning. There are still some termz that I completely don't know how to translate and have to use other onez, and there are many wordz that I don't know (it would be a pain for me to travel to some English-only country, as I would need to carry an internet dictionary all the time, and if engaged into a discussion, I would be probably forced from time to time to say "excuse me" in the middle of the sentence to search for a word or term I need). Also, I still have difficultiez to remember which version of the word I should use in the used time (Present Perfect, Past Simple and so on).

About all the Z letterz, I'm trying to use them only at the end of the plural word.

Post by GooRoo on Dec 10, 2010 5:50:19 GMT -8

You've got the version with not fixed bug, even though it was already fixed. How did that happen?

*Sigh* Anyway, just avoid that brick.

First thanks for this level. Its hard but i got the perfect. Yes i did avoid that brick I did downloaded it from this forum?

I just checked, and the Forum's web host version was dated November 30, 2010 ... so it was the version I originally received from Zu, not the corrected version. I evidently forgot to re-upload it after I found the problem in my testing, and made the correction.

The corrected version is now available for download. If you had received the e-mail with "Bomber Grunt" as the attachment, you would have never discovered the problem ... because it no longer existed. I still cannot understand how just one person failed to get the e-mail! If you (yourin) were the last entry in the address list, that would be the answer ... but the Designer (Zu) is the last entry! Since not one person posted about not receiving the Custom Level, I have to presume that everyone did.